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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27801916">once, like a drizzle; twice, like a storm</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverstudent/pseuds/foreverstudent'>foreverstudent</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Super Junior</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Heechul loves Leeteuk, Leeteuk loves Heechul, Mentions of Car Accidents</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27801916</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverstudent/pseuds/foreverstudent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A close call in Singapore brings back unwanted memories for Leeteuk and Heechul. They get through it, somehow.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>83line - Relationship, Heeteuk - Relationship, Kim Heechul/Park Jungsoo | Leeteuk, Teukchul - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>once, like a drizzle; twice, like a storm</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">The two of them smiled wryly at each other once the car door slid shut, blocking out the fans’ screams at the airport. The sun had already set and they had just landed, both of them exhausted, and somehow had arrived in time for one company car to fetch just the two of them, as the other members had already arrived earlier.</p><p class="p1">The car moved out of the airport, and they were soon cruising on the road that would bring them to their hotel, where they were both looking forward to a warm bath and at least one night’s sleep before the concert the next day. Leeteuk immediately brought out his phone and checked his messages, going over the show in his head.</p><p class="p1">“Yah, there’ll be enough time for that later,” Heechul murmured, laying back in his seat and closing his eyes. “You should get some rest.”</p><p class="p1">“Later,” Leeteuk replied, eyes not leaving his phone. “Got to make sure everything’s ready.”</p><p class="p1">“That’s why we have staff,” Heechul deadpans, gesturing to their manager in the front seat and leaning over to pluck Leeteuk’s phone out of his hands, tucking it into his own duffel bag.</p><p class="p1">“Heechul!” Leeteuk said in exasperation. “Give it back.”</p><p class="p1">“Later,” the younger said firmly. “Get some rest.”</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk sat back with a huff, crossing his arms. “I should be the one telling you that, Universe Big Star.”</p><p class="p1">“Kang Hodong Jr.,” Heechul shot back with a smirk, eyes already closed. “Not a competition, Mr. Park Jungsoo. Get some rest. We’re both exhausted.”</p><p class="p1">And they were. Coupled with the variety shows and dramas and other activities they had to juggle as the two eldest members, the entire team was also in the middle of the SuperShow 3 tour. The fatigue of flying back and forth was taking its toll on their otherwise youthful bodies.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk gave up, closing his eyes as well as the car quieted. The gentle movement of the vehicle lulled them both into a comfortable sleep as the car cruised along.</p><hr/><p class="p1">The impact was the first thing they felt. The car whipped forward suddenly and jolted them both awake, the driver cursing as he applied the brakes and honked his horn. Leeteuk’s eyes snapped open and he immediately looked for Heechul, grasping the younger’s arm and relieved that both of them had worn their seatbelts.</p><p class="p1">Heechul gasped, the car speeding forward until it came to an abrupt halt. Behind them, they heard the incessant car horns and the succeeding sounds of two-three-four-five-six-seven crashes. Every sound felt like a death toll for both of them, and they stared at each other wild-eyed, not knowing what to think.</p><p class="p1">They only briefly registered their manager checking on them and then shouting into his phone, beside their Singaporean driver who was contacting the emergency and traffic services.</p><p class="p1">“…fans…apologize…collision…seven cars….we need…hotel…”</p><p class="p1">The overlapping sounds of the car horns and their manager’s and driver’s frantic conversations were too much, and Heechul laid his head back and took deep breaths. They were not hurt, his seatbelt saved him, his body was intact, his leg was fine…</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Teukie. </em>
</p><p class="p1">His friend was staring out the window at the carnage behind them, frozen, his hand still on Heechul’s forearm in a death grip, so hard that it started to hurt and Heechul could see his friend’s knuckles turning white.</p><p class="p1">“Teukie…” Heechul said gently, shaking his forearm. His friend didn’t notice, just kept staring out the window. Heechul couldn’t see his friend’s face, and he leaned forward to get a better view, concerned. “Teuk-ah! Leeteuk!” Heechul called, raising his voice. “Jungsoo!”</p><p class="p1">“Hmm? What?” Leeteuk finally said, turning around to face Heechul. Heechul was shocked to see that tears had streamed down his friend’s face, coming from wide panicked eyes. “Your hand,” he simply said, shaking his forearm. Leeteuk looked down in shock and immediately let go. “I’m sorry! Sorry, I—“</p><p class="p1">“It’s okay,” Heechul said immediately, cutting him off and looking at his friend in concern.</p><p class="p1">At that moment, the manager threw their passenger door open and spoke quickly. “We hailed a taxi for now. The driver will take care of this, but we need to get you two to the hotel and get checked up. The company doctor is waiting, and your things will follow.”</p><p class="p1">The two of them got out, Leeteuk sparing a glance behind them. “But what about—“</p><p class="p1">“The fans are fine,” the manager said exasperatingly. “No one got hurt, but their parents are not going to behappy with the damages they’re going to pay.”</p><p class="p1">He herded the two into a waiting taxi, and they sped off to the hotel. Heechul didn’t miss the way Leeteuk immediately told him to put on his seatbelt (which he did without complaint) and the way Leeteuk kept checking on him anxiously with his panicked eyes.</p><hr/><p class="p1">They arrived at the hotel without further incident, and their manager whisked them away to a prepared room where their company doctor was waiting. The medical examination went quickly, and they were asked to wait in the clinic room while their hotel room was prepared.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk sat quietly while the doctor examined him, staring into space. When the doctor moved on to Heechul, he noticed that Leeteuk’s eyes were trained on him, on his leg, but when he tried to catch his friend’s eyes, Leeteuk looked away.</p><p class="p1">“You’re both fine,” the doctor said, straightening. “I’ll tell them to get your hotel room ready. Rest a bit more. I’ll be monitoring you all throughout your show tomorrow, and you must tell me if any of you feel any discomfort at all.” They both nodded, and the doctor gathered his things and opened the door, only to be confronted by a corridor full of anxious twenty-year old boys.</p><p class="p1">“Doctor, are they okay? Can we see them? How are they?” Heechul looked at Leeteuk, who was gazing at the noisy open door with a strange mix of worry and fondness.</p><p class="p1">Their manager squeezed into the clinic to announce that their hotel room was ready, and Heechul quickly pulled him aside while Leeteuk was getting dressed. “Hyung, please get the kids to their own rooms first and tell them we’re fine and we’ll see them tomorrow,” Heechul whispered. Thankfully, their manager just nodded and cleared the noisy corridor, herding the protesting members off so that Leeteuk and Heechul could escape to their room for their good night’s rest.</p><p class="p1">After Heechul talked to his friend, that is.</p><hr/><p class="p1">The quiet in their hotel room was deafening.</p><p class="p1">“You can shower first,” Leeteuk said, fixing his things that had been brought up.</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” Heechul said, and took his time. When he got out, Leeteuk was seated on his bed, already going through his phone and (Heechul presumed) working.</p><p class="p1">“You can go,” Heechul said, toweling his hair, and Leeteuk wordlessly got up and entered the bathroom. Heechul watched him go, but Leeteuk didn’t acknowledge him.</p><p class="p1">Heechul sighed as plopped down on his bed. This was going to be difficult.</p><p class="p1">When Leeteuk got out of the shower, Heechul was sitting on his bed. Leeteuk raised his eyebrows.</p><p class="p1">“That’s my bed.”</p><p class="p1">Heechul shrugged his shoulders. “I know.”</p><p class="p1">“So what are you doing on it?” Leeteuk asked, fixing his things.</p><p class="p1">“Stopping you from working on it,” Heechul said nonchalantly, laying back and stretching out even more. “Beds are for sleeping, Jungsoo-yah.”</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk sighed as he turned back around and surveyed his friend splayed on his bed. “Get off, Heechul-ah.”</p><p class="p1">“Make me,” Heechul challenged, not moving.</p><p class="p1">“Not the time, Heechul-ah,” Leeteuk said, voice getting harder.</p><p class="p1">“I think the time’s perfect, actually,” Heechul said, getting up on his elbows and squarely meeting his friend’s eyes. “It’s time to talk, not work, Jungsoo.”</p><p class="p1">“There’s nothing to talk about,” Leeteuk said, giving up and just going around to Heechul’s own bed, lying down. “You’re right, let’s go to sleep.”</p><p class="p1">“Are you okay?” Heechul asked, deciding to just go for it. Subtlety was never his strong suit anyway.</p><p class="p1">Silence reigned as Leeteuk stared at the ceiling, not really surprised at his friend’s question but not wanting to answer it at all. Heechul, to his credit, knew that he just had to wait.</p><p class="p1">“Yes.”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t lie.”</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk closed his eyes. He could never lie to Heechul.Ever. The younger man always saw through him every. Damn. Time.</p><p class="p1">“No.”</p><p class="p1">Heechul waited. A minute, maybe more. The room tensed.</p><p class="p1">“How do you do it, Heechul-ah?” Leeteuk finally said.</p><p class="p1">“Do what?”</p><p class="p1">“Go through a car accident and still live like everything’s fine.”</p><p class="p1">Heechul snorted. “You of all people know I wasn’t fine in the beginning, Teuk-ah. Therapy,lots of it.” He sighed. He still felt guilty for how he acted in the wake of his accident: angrier than usual but with no one else to lash out at except his members, who wanted nothing else but to help him. It took a lot to come to terms with the fact that his life as a singer was probably never going to be the same again. The bitterness of that had been painful to swallow.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry for hurting you awhile ago.”</p><p class="p1">“Nice redirect,” Heechul huffed, turning on his side to face Leeteuk directly. “But we’re talking about you now.”</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk just smiled at the ceiling, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that Heechul loved to see on his friend’s face, the one where his dimple showed and he radiated sunny happiness. This smile was resigned, sad, <em>heavy. </em></p><p class="p1">“I guess what happened brought back a lot of the trauma,” Leeteuk started slowly. “When I woke up, I couldn’t move. It was the scariest thing. All I remember was screaming…for Hyukjae, Shindong, and Kyu.”</p><p class="p1">Heechul closed his eyes. The night they all got the call that the members were in another accident was one of the worst nights of his life.</p><p class="p1">“The company therapist said it was—“</p><p class="p1">“Guilt.” Heechul cut in.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk raised his head to look at Heechul, who just stared back. “Guilt,” Leeteuk repeated, laying his head back on the pillow. “Yeah.”</p><p class="p1">“It wasn’t your fault.” Heechul said. “You couldn’t have stopped the vehicle coming your way, and you couldn’t have stopped the fans from following us earlier either.”</p><p class="p1">“True,” Leeteuk acknowledged. “I could’ve protected Kyuhyun, though. I could’ve stopped you from making the trip from Mokpo that night.”</p><p class="p1">Heechul looked at his friend incredulously and reached over the gap between them to slap him on the shoulder. “Yah!”</p><p class="p1">“Ow—what?” Leeteuk asked, rubbing his sore shoulder. The eyes that faced Heechul were serious and heavy with doubt. Heechul hated to look in them.</p><p class="p1">“Are you all-powerful or just delusional?” Heechul almost shouted, and Leeteuk looked confused. “What?” he asked again.</p><p class="p1">“Stop blaming yourself for the things you can’t control,” Heechul parroted dutifully, the same words that had been told to him by the company-hired therapist over repeated sessions. Leeteuk just looked at him. “You too.”</p><p class="p1">“You—what?” Heechul stopped and looked at him blankly. “You too,” Leeteuk just repeated, eyes wandering to Heechul’s leg—the same leg that would never be the same again.</p><p class="p1">Heechul just snapped his mouth shut and sighed. “Okay, yes, fine. <em>Both of us </em>need to stop blaming ourselves for things we can’t control. Happy?”</p><p class="p1">“Easier said than done,” Leeteuk whispered, lying back in bed and throwing an arm over his eyes. And what could Heechul say to that, when it was obviously so true?</p><p class="p1">Huffing, Heechul got out of bed and pushed it, moving it closer and closer to Leeteuk’s bed until the gap between the two had closed. Leeteuk lifted his head and raised an eyebrow as he watched his friend work. “What are you doing?”</p><p class="p1">“After the accident, all I wanted was to be alone,” Heechul said, climbing back onto their makeshift wide bed. He laid down, the distance between the two no more than a hand away. “But the problem with guilt is that it eats you up alive, and being alone feeds it,” he continued hesitantly, staring up at the ceiling. “You, the members — all of you at the hospital, even when I shouted and screamed, you stayed. That—that helped.”</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk closed his eyes, aware of the warm body beside him and remembering his own days in the hospital, the worry of staying by Kyuhyun’s side as his own wounds slowly healed. “Thanks,” Leeteuk whispered, hesitantly holding out his hand and letting out a breath he didn’t know he was keeping in. Heechul’s own warm hand enveloped his own, a reminder that he wasn’t alone. They weren’t alone.</p><p class="p1">“Good night, Heechul-ah. Thank you.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">Leeteuk had just closed his eyes, consciously keeping his grip on Heechul, when a knock came at their door.</p><p class="p1">“It’s 1 AM.” Heechul groaned, burrowing further underneath the covers. Leeteuk just wordlessly got up and shoved his feet into the hotel slippers groggily, making his way to the door. Heechul sighed and got up after him, ready to bite the head off whoever was keeping them both up after an accident and before a whole damn concert.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk opened the door only to find his arms full of a distraught member, which his sleepy brain only identified as Donghae after a few seconds. Taking a few steps back, he finally registered the sniffling coming from the boy in his arms. “Donghae?” Leeteuk asked gently, rubbing comforting circles in his member’s back, damp with sweat. Leeteuk raised his eyes questioningly at Heechul, who merely shrugged and gestured to the other intruder who was still standing shyly in the doorway.</p><p class="p1">“He had a nightmare,” Eunhyuk whispered, looking at Donghae but not making any move to come in, as though he was unwelcome. Leeteuk saw through it immediately, and Donghae chose that moment to leave him and latch on to his Heechul hyung, who gasped as Donghae’s koala arms enveloped him. Leeteuk smirked slightly watching his friend struggle, but Heechul eventually gave up and rolled his eyes, returning Donghae’s hug. None of them could resist Donghae.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk stepped forward and gave a hug of his own to Hyukjae, who gripped at him just as tightly. “We’re really glad you’re both okay, hyung,” Hyukjae whispered sleepily into Leeteuk’s shoulder, and Leeteuk smiled. “We’re fine,” he said, closing the door behind the two of them.</p><p class="p1">“Yah, are they both sleeping here?!” Heechul exclaimed, even as he oh-so-gently maneuvered a sleepy and cried-out Donghae onto their makeshift wide bed.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk didn’t even answer, just fluffed the pillows and gently pushed Hyukjae quietly onto the bed. Getting up, he surveyed the little space left for him and Heechul on either side.</p><p class="p1">“Aish,” Heechul said, stomping over to the closet and pulling out the hotel’s extra pillow and thin bedsheets. Leeteuk quirked an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”</p><p class="p1">Heechul just laid down the bedsheets and pillow on the rough carpeted floor. <em>Damn SM for not getting them rooms big enough to have sofas. </em>“What does it look like?”</p><p class="p1">“It looks like you’re sleeping on the floor.”</p><p class="p1">“Genius, Teukkie. Now find your own place and let’s sleep, because I’m not moving.” Heechul huffed, closing his eyes and chasing sleep.</p><p class="p1">“Yes you are,” Leeteuk replied, and Heechul got up unwillingly to see Leeteuk gently moving Donghae over to make some space for Heechul. “You can’t sleep on the floor with that leg.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m fine,” Heechul gritted out, but if he was honest, he could already feel his leg getting stiff. <em>Damn it. </em></p><p class="p1">Leeteuk eyed his friend knowingly. “You’re not. Come on, get up, the floor can’t be that comfortable.”</p><p class="p1">Heechul obeyed, although grudgingly, and squeezed himself into Donghae’s side. The boy moved to make room, nudging Hyukjae, who swiftly took over Leeteuk’s space. “And where do you think you’re sleeping?” Heechul asked his friend sarcastically, although he already knew the answer.</p><p class="p1">Leeteuk was already laying down in the makeshift beddings that Heechul had abandoned, his exhaustion winning over the sensation of the hard floor poking at his spine. “Good night, Heechul-ah,” Teuk whispered, turning off the room lights.</p><p class="p1">But before he could drift off to sleep, Leeteuk heard some rustling from the bed and a softness thrown over him. Heechul had snatched the comforter from under the two sleeping members and tossed it over his friend.</p><p class="p1">“Yah, it’s cold,” Leeteuk reasoned, making a move to throw the comforter back. “We’ll live,” Heechul replied, turning down the airconditioner. “But you were right, that floor isn’t comfortable. Put it under you, it’s thick enough.”</p><p class="p1">Hiding a smile, Leeteuk did what Heechul said and found that he was right. The hard floor now felt like he was sleeping on a camping bag, which was almost exactly what their beddings were all like during the early days of their debut. Nothing new. “Thanks, Heechul-ah,” Leeteuk said, stretching out on the floor and making himself comfortable. “Good night.”</p><p class="p1">“Good night, Teukie,” Heechul whispered.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>I’m glad we’re both okay. </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This close call did really happen in Singapore and both Heechul and Leeteuk tweeted about it back then. The rest was just my own writing exercise to imagine the aftermath.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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